Zane didn’t hear the phone the first ti it vibrated, because the office had settled into that late-hour hush that only arrived after everyone else went ho, when the building stopped pretending it belonged to people and admitted it belonged to work, and his desk lamp threw a small, tired circle of light across contracts and notes while, beyond the glass, Atlanta stretched out in clean lines of white and amber that looked orderly from a distance and brutal up close.
He had been reading the sa paragraph for several minutes, not because it was complex, but because his brain had started refusing new information in the way a body refused more pain once it reached its threshold.
When the phone buzzed again, closer and more insistent this ti, he glanced down with irritation already rising, only for it to stall when he saw the na on the screen.
"Mum," he said, answering without greeting.
"Have you eaten," Lorrlyne asked, equally without greeting.
He leaned back, eyes on the ceiling, exhaling through his nose as though he could drain the day out of his chest by force alone, before replying that he really couldn’t talk right now because he was still in the office and would grab sothing later.
A pause followed that carried neither disapproval nor concern, but calculation.
"You said that yesterday," she replied.
"And yesterday I ant it."
"Did you," she asked mildly, and he heard the blade beneath the softness, the tone she used when reassurance was a wasted effort.
He dragged a hand down his face and asked what she needed.
"I wanted to grab a bite," she said, before adding that she could hear him and that he was welded to that desk.
He closed his eyes briefly and said that he was, because tonight mattered.
"Yes," she said, "that’s why I called now."
His jaw tightened in a familiar way, the tightening that ca before he said sothing sharp and imdiately regretted it, and he accused her of always doing this.
"I don’t," she corrected calmly. "I wait until people stop lying to themselves."
He didn’t answer, and the silence that followed wasn’t awkward or hostile but old, carrying history and the weight of a woman who had watched him master rooms and still knew exactly where his seams were.
"This isn’t ideal," she said at last.
"No," he agreed imdiately, surprised by the speed of his response and by how badly he had needed soone else to na it first. "It isn’t."
He waited for the lecture, but it didn’t co.
Instead, she asked how tired he was.
A quiet, humorless laugh slipped out of him as he said that he was tired enough that if anyone else asked, he would lie.
"But you won’t lie to ."
"No," he said. "I won’t."
He pushed his chair back and stood, moving to the window and pressing his free hand to the glass as if it could keep him upright, while his reflection looked older than he felt, sharper and pulled too tight around the eyes.
"I hate this," he said suddenly, the words unpolished and raw from the place he kept locked, asking whether she thought he liked being here while everything that mattered was sowhere else.
Lorrlyne didn’t interrupt, because she never interrupted when the truth finally arrived.
"I need to be here," he continued, his voice controlled only because he forced it to be, explaining that the deal wasn’t theoretical or about optics, that it was thirty-four million dollars, new hires, expansion, and stability, and that he couldn’t sign it from a screen and pretend it was the sa thing, because if he wasn’t in the room, he would lose leverage he wouldn’t get back.
"I know," she said.
"And I would love nothing more," he went on, the words now refusing to stop, "than finding a ho for us here, marrying Willow here, and building a life with our daughter here, because Atlanta makes sense on paper with its infrastructure and my companies and everything I already built."
He stopped with his breath uneven, and for a second the silence felt like standing at the edge of sothing.
"And yet," he said more quietly, "I cannot tell her to put her life on pause for , and I won’t."
Lorrlyne let that hang between them long enough for him to hear himself.
"You’re angry," she observed.
"No," he said imdiately, insisting that he was frustrated and that there was a difference.
"There is," she agreed, "and frustration is more dangerous, because people pretend it’s neutral."
He held himself still, feeling the edge rise and the impulse to defend, explain, and turn this into an argunt he could win, because that would be easier than admitting he was failing at sothing that wasn’t negotiable on paper.
"Mum," he said carefully, "I am doing everything I can not to turn this into pressure."
"I see that," she replied, "and I’m not calling to undo it."
"Then why does it feel like you’re interrogating ."
"Because I am," she said calmly, "and because you can handle it."
He closed his eyes again, the way a man did when he needed a second to stay civilized.
"Did you ask her," Lorrlyne continued, "really ask her, not once, not carefully, and not with an escape hatch built into the question."
He didn’t answer, and that was answer enough.
"Did you try," she pressed, her voice steady and unraised, "to tell her what you want without sanding it down into sothing easier to refuse."
Zane swallowed as his throat tightened in a way exhaustion couldn’t explain, before saying that he had told her he didn’t want to resent coming ho and didn’t want to beco soone she had to guard against.
"That’s noble," Lorrlyne said, "and incomplete."
He opened his eyes with irritation flickering despite his restraint and asked what she wanted from him, accusing her of wanting him to bulldoze her.
"No," she said sharply, "to be honest."
"I am being honest."
"You’re being considerate," she corrected. "Those are not the sa thing."
He turned away from the window and braced a hand on the edge of his desk, where the papers sat neat and obedient, pretending life could be organized into columns.
"She just had a baby," he said. "She’s rebuilding herself, her work, and her ground, and I am not going to walk in and say move your life because mine is inconvenient."
"I didn’t say you should," Lorrlyne replied. "I asked whether you’ve said what you want as clearly as you’re saying it to ."
He hesitated, and the silence gave him away.
"You’re protecting her from your desire," she said, "and protecting yourself from hearing no."
His jaw tightened as he said it wasn’t fair.
"It’s accurate," she replied, "and accuracy is my love language."
A breath that was almost a laugh escaped him as he said she always had a way of making things worse.
"I make them visible," she said. "They’re already worse. You just haven’t tripped over them yet."
He dropped back into his chair as the fight drained out of him, admitting that he didn’t want to break this before it was even fully built.
"Then stop treating it like it’s made of glass," Lorrlyne said. "It’s made of people, and people need truth more than cushioning."
He stared at the paperwork again and said slowly that if he told her and she still said no.
"Then you have information," Lorrlyne replied. "Not failure."
"And if that information hurts."
"It will," she said. "Pain is not proof you chose wrong."
He went quiet, the city still moving beyond the glass, indifferent to what it cost to be a man trying not to beco his own worst instinct.
"I hate being this far away," he admitted, saying it plainly, from her, from Zana, and from the life he wanted to wake up in.
"I know," Lorrlyne said, her voice softening just enough to feel dangerous. "I can hear it in everything you don’t say."
He swallowed again and admitted that he was scared that if he asked for more, he would beco the thing she escaped.
"Only if you confuse asking with demanding," she said. "You were not raised to do that."
He closed his eyes and let that land, uncomfortable and necessary.
"You don’t get to skip this part," Lorrlyne continued, "the part where you learn how to negotiate a life with soone who isn’t an extension of you, because Willow isn’t a solution, she’s a partner."
"I know," he said.
"Then act like one," she replied, telling him to say what he wanted, let her say what she could give, and stop assuming sacrifice had to be silent to be honorable.
The line went quiet again, and Zane stared at the city, the office, and the work that mattered and didn’t all at once, feeling oddly exposed not to judgnt but to clarity.
"Will you have dinner tomorrow," Lorrlyne asked, the pivot abrupt and deliberate.
He agreed.
"Good," she said, adding that she would hold him to it.
"Mum."
"Yes."
"Thank you," he said, aning it the way adults did, without softness or obligation, just truth.
She paused before telling him to finish his work and adding, "And Zane."
"Yes."
"Don’t confuse endurance with virtue," she said. "They’re often just avoidance in better shoes."
The call ended, and Zane stayed still for a long ti after the screen went dark as the office humd faintly around him and the questions refused to return to silence.
He didn’t feel accused, because what he felt was seen.
Sowhere beneath exhaustion, pressure, and the love he was trying so carefully not to weaponize, he understood what he hadn’t let himself na yet, which was that this wasn’t about choosing Atlanta or Los Angeles, but about learning how to ask for a future without trying to control its shape.
He looked down at his desk, at the contracts, at the photo of Zana, and at Willow’s face caught mid-laugh and alive and unguarded.
For the first ti that week, he shut his laptop without opening another file, not because the work was finished, but because so conversations couldn’t be won at a desk and could only be survived with honesty.
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